St Vincent and the Grenadines / Special Interests / Food and Cooking

St Vincent’s volcanic terrain has given the island fertile soil, turning it into a natural larder where almost anything will grow. As a result fruit and vegetables are plentiful here, but the staple most closely associated with St Vincent – and one most closely tied to the island’s culture and heritage – is the breadfruit. Believed to have been brought to St Vincent in 1793 by Captain William Bligh, the breadfruit forms part of St Vincent’s national dish of roasted breadfruit and fried jack fish. It is said that a breadfruit tree growing in the botanical gardens of St Vincent’s capital Kingstown is descended from one of the original breadfruit plants brought by Captain Bligh from Tahiti. The fruit was used as cheap food for slaves during colonial times, but now it is celebrated every year at St Vincent’s Breadfruit Festival in August when festivities are held each weekend in different communities across the island. St Vincent and the Grenadines now grow more than 25 varieties of breadfruit.

Another plant grown here is arrowroot, traditionally grown by Amerindian tribes. A starchy, tuber-like plant, it is crushed and dried to produce a powder substituted for flour in bread and used in other dishes such as cakes, sauces, biscuits and puddings. St Vincent is one of the few places in the world where arrowroot is cultivated and it is grown on the hills in the Owia area in the north-east of the island.

One of the best places to see the full range of St Vincent’s locally-grown fruit, vegetables and spices is at Kingstown’s market every Friday and Saturday where stalls are loaded with a cornucopia of natural produce ranging from seasoning peppers and sweet potatoes to plantains, dasheen, christophenes and yams.

Food in St Vincent and the Grenadines is generally either solidly international (in most of the places that appeal to yachtsmen and other travellers or tourists), or it is solidly West Indian, with traditional meat or chicken dishes accompanied by local vegetables or rice ‘n’ peas. Specialities include curried goat or lambi (conch). Fresh fish is also popular and includes snapper, flying fish or marlin, depending on the season. In the village of Barrouallie on St Vincent’s west coast, “black fish” (pilot whale) is a local delicacy.

There is a handful of other styles, a French restaurant on one island and an Italian on another, say, but many of the islands are small and so there is not necessarily that much choice.

There is a pretty good range of restaurants, from simple local establishments serving authentic and inexpensive Vincentian food, through the waterfront diners designed mainly for yachtsmen, to the more sophisticated dining rooms, usually in hotels, that offer a more formal or romantic international dining experience. Of course many of them take advantage of the fantastic settings in the islands, often with a cracking view out to sea.